Spot the error

Livio Di Matteo in last week's Toronto Star:

The patterns of economic history may be about to repeat themselves in Ontario's north providing an economic boost for the entire province. Ontario's north is still a vast storehouse of forest and mineral wealth, and continued growth in the economies of China, India and Brazil will eventually generate an upturn in resource prices, which will spark a boom in resource commodities.

In the James Bay Lowlands, in Ontario's so-called "Ring of Fire," there are more than 100 mining companies with holdings. The entire area north of 50 is an untapped region of forest, mineral and hydroelectric power wealth whose development will require the building of roads, communications infrastructure and power transmission lines. The export of the resources will rejuvenate Ontario's transportation system, including the ports of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway.

Well, I'd quibble about the utility of the St. Lawrence Seaway (seems more likely that meeting commodity demand in Asia would, I dunno, head to the Pacific coast) but fine, you've intrigued me.

Then there's this:

Ontario's government recognizes that the north's economy is poised to undergo dramatic changes in the near future and to that effect has commissioned a Northern Growth Plan. However, the plan is not a panacea because governments cannot ultimately plan economic growth, which is largely the outcome of market forces, though they can help facilitate and accommodate it.

But you just said

The entire area north of 50 is an untapped region of forest, mineral and hydroelectric power wealth whose development will require the building of roads, communications infrastructure and power transmission lines.

At least two of those three are only built by the Government of Ontario, at the scale we're talking about here. The choice to build publicly-funded roads and transmission lines is, ahem, economic planning whether we call it that or not. And if you think that private industry is able or willing to build that kind of infrastructure in this province on its own, you're clearly insane. If the examples of the 407 or Bruce Power are anything to go by, private business in this province likes to wait until the people of Ontario have paid to build assets, and then snap them up during the most convenient recession for pennies on the dollar, only to sell services back to Ontarians for extortionate prices.

There's a liberalism of the mind at work here, where we have to vociferously insist that we're not talking about industrial policy even when we're clearly proposing industrial policy. It boggles my mind.

I should say that, gratuitous ideological signalling aside, I actually think Di Matteo's argument is relatively sound. Certainly, building economic opportunity outside of the south in this Province makes a lot of sense, if only to try and take pressure off the increasingly-congested and dysfunctional GTA.